


Blood Makes Noise

by LaFemmeDarla



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, Incest, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-12
Updated: 2008-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:57:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaFemmeDarla/pseuds/LaFemmeDarla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All she can do now is teach him how to survive where Angel couldn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Makes Noise

The cut on Darla's neck has already healed, but Connor's skin is still a constellation of healing cuts and fading bruises. Darla runs gentle fingers over his chest, tracing patterns with sweat and blood. He watches her through hooded eyes, always alert, not quite trusting her.

Still, he doesn't stop her when she replaces her fingers with her tongue. His blood warms her as his hands tangle in her hair, pulling her towards him for a kiss.

He tastes like home.   
*   
Darla's memories are never the same after that night in Angel's bed. She can remember dressing up and picking up the ring afterwards, payment for a whore. She can remember talking to Lindsey and the cold silence afterwards, then packing her bags after he left with vengeance on his mind.

_Did he live? Did he die? Darla almost cares._

She can remember packing up her things, her thoughts too much of a mess to realize when her hands closed around a holy object hidden among her things until her flesh burned and the pain made her drop it. A rosary, a mad gift from Drusilla. Darla should have left it there, broken it to pieces with the heel of her boot, but she had picked it up, wrapped it in a silk scarf and put it in a pocket of her bag, unable to let go. She had lost so much already.

She remembers the bus station, her trembling hands pulling out money and receiving a ticket. The destination wasn't important. Just away. As far away from him as possible.

She passes towns with names that elude her. She travels south, never staying long in one place, bathing on cool beaches at night and sleeping in cheap motels with lazy fans on their roofs during the day. She takes lovers, polishes her Spanish and drinks the blood of unsuspecting fools. It should be enough, but it isn't. The hunger is too strong and it seems to grow no matter how many people she drains each night. The world is her feast but each drop of blood she takes is bitter and unsatisfying.

Her journey takes her beyond Mexico, to places she's never seen before: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. And somehow she recognizes them all. She can see herself curled up in a tiny bathroom in a small town with a name she cannot pronounce, feverish and violently ill. She finds herself meeting with witches, seers and shamans all over Central America, people she's never met before and yet can find by taking a random turn on a deserted street, just knocking on a door for no reason at all. Always looking for the answer to a question she doesn't know.

Déjà vu be damned. Something else is going on here.

*

She finds an answer somewhere in Honduras. The shaman's hands shake as they set everything up. Darla closes her eyes and focuses on the smell of her own blood and burning herbs. This ends here. She has to believe it does.

That is, until she hears the bowl drop. She opens her eyes just as it shatters and spills its contents all over the dirt floor. Then the shaman speaks in a trembling voice. Seven words.

Darla reaches out, breaking the neck in one swift move.

*

She does her best to forget about it, continuing her journey, never staying in the same place long enough. Sometimes she ponders going back, finding Angel and demanding his help. She took him back once, gave him a second chance. He owes her. Even if he makes good on his promise and kills her, maybe that will put an end to this madness.

But a part of her remains stubborn, bent on survival. There are more places to see, views to enjoy, parties to attend. She lets her beauty and charm open doors for her, playing the part of a happy, carefree woman with impossible ease. Sometimes even she believes it.

*

November finds her back in Tijuana, walking down Avenida Revolución. People pass her by and she takes her time looking for a snack. Her red dress would offer no proper protection against the cool weather had she been human and she shudders at the memory

_Her weak mortal body slowly dying. No more chances. Angel tearing the temple apart before collapsing in a hopeless, broken mess. _

He had promised to be there for her until the end.

The rain takes her by surprise, but she welcomes it, her body suddenly warm, feverish and longing for the cold. She should find shelter but she chooses the cold instead, moving forward, mind wandering. Suddenly her good mood is replaced by a wave of fear and pain. As she falls down to her knees, Darla thinks she might be dying, body exploding in a cloud of dust, ashes washed away by the rain. And the shaman's words come back to haunt her as lost memories rush to haunt her.

_"You are not supposed to exist anymore."_

*  
She doesn't die that night. In fact, she barely remembers anything she does after that night. She'll be sitting under a tree one evening and blink and wake up in an old warehouse, sun high outside. The old déjà vu is replaced by a dreadful feeling of emptiness and mixed emotions. She wants the blackness to go away, for her mind to clear. She wants to go back to the way things were.

And above all, she wants to know what happened to her son.

She dreams about him once. A little wisp of a boy with eyes that have seen too much. He is afraid and there is nothing she can do to help him. She tries – she can't remember how but oh how hard she tries. And she fails

_and it kills her._

She tries to make her way back to Los Angeles, but her mind betrays her, her body goes numb and she drifts away, farther south. She struggles but the blackness is too strong. Until it occurs to her than maybe she is not supposed to fight it but rather to go with the flow, see where it takes her.

It's such a dangerous thought, to let this take over, but didn't Drusilla's madness ultimately save her from the burden of souls and death? She thinks of Drusilla and the rosary Darla keeps in her bag. You'd think that child wouldn't have lasted a decade. And yet…

It is indeed a scary day when Drusilla is the one to follow. But she's desperate enough to give it a try.

*

Darla lets the current take her, mostly in circles, the same towns over and over. Nothing of importance happens but Darla doesn't mind. The routine gives her time to think, to attempt to put her thoughts in order. Her mind treasures a rough sketch of memories, people and events reduced to basic strokes, never giving her the whole picture.

Ironically, is in this mad state of hers that an old seer – one that survived her first rampage anyway - can read her, her aura apparently clear enough to provide a suitable explanation now.

"It's too powerful for me to see it all," the woman tells Darla. "But whatever it is, it altered memories and undid some big moments. Dangerous magic if handled incorrectly."

Even lying on the table, the seer's hands shake and not with fear. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see her weeks are numbered. She reeks of death and useless medicine. Pain flashes on her gaze every time she moves. Which is probably why she has no problem helping out a vampire.

"Can you tell me who did this to me?" Darla asks an old woman. The seer shakes her head.

"This was never meant for you," she says. "Not directly anyway. Reality was shifted around and you were caught in it. You were merely part of a chain of events that had to be undone."

Darla's mind races. Somehow, everything that happened after she left Los Angeles was undone and changed. Of course, if that is the case, then she never staked herself in a back alley on a rainy November night.

It goes without saying but this has to be Angel's fault.

"If none of this ever happened, then why am I remembering it?"

The seer smiles a little and pulls her chair back. She is ready for the killing blow. "Because if you never died, why bother erasing your memories?"

Darla cannot think of a worse fate than letting the woman live.

*

At first glance the city remains the same, but she can sense the power all over the place like a very fine mist. It becomes stronger as she approaches the Hyperion and it's almost dizzying in the alley just behind the hotel. Not too long ago, a battle was fought. But how exactly did it end? The Hyperion is empty. Darla settles in the cleanest room – which is not saying much – and goes looking for answers.

It takes a few hours making the rounds of the demon bars to get a long story made short from drunken demons and gossipy vampires. They speak of Angel's attempt to overrun the Senior Partners once and for all and how he succeeded – somehow.

Nobody can tell her for sure what happened to Angel – he's dead, he's alive, he's a prisoner of the Senior Partners, he's human and living in Hawaii. Their imagination is endless.

She is more interested about the boy. A little thing not much taller than you, they tell her. And yet he fights like the best of them, taking them down one by one. They have plans to kill the boy. He's a danger to the community, you know?

Yes, Darla knows. She also knows this is the boy she once carried inside of her. She remembers the anger, the fear and the pain of being pregnant.

She remembers loving him more than anything else. She remembers giving her life for him.

By the time she is done with her sources, she leaves behind about a dozen dead vampires and demons and a bar consumed by fire.

She makes her way back to Hyperion alley. She has no doubt about Angel's fate, for Angel would have never allowed this to happen. He would have done everything in his power to keep their son away from this.

He would have wanted a normal childhood for their child. How did the boy become a man in so little time?

And now Angel cannot give her any answers.

"You were supposed to protect him," she says to the empty alley.

*

The first time she sees him is almost the last.

It happens, of course, in an alley. Five against one and yet he wins. He is barely standing when she makes her way towards him. His eyes widen with recognition before losing consciousness. Darla takes the boy to the hotel and spends the following hours watching over him. He looks small, like a strong wind might take him down when in reality he could stand almost anything, his hair is soft under her hands and she knows that once he awakes, she'll see blue eyes just like hers. He looks so much like her and it's both wonderful and terrifying. The boy of her dreams tosses and turns all night as his body heals. Sunrise is creeping in by the time he awakes.

"You shouldn't be here," is the first thing he says to her. She cannot help but smile.

"Tell me about it," she replies.

*

He leaves once he's well enough to walk. He returns a few hours later and takes a room across from hers.

*

A week passes before he is convinced Darla is not a product of his feverish imagination and tells her his story – not all of it, but he tells her of Holtz, of Quor-Toth, of locking Angel in a box, of Angel making a deal to give Connor something resembling a normal life.

It's hard not to let their guard down around each other. Predators bent on survival and drawn together by bloodlines and mutual fascination. They talk as she helps him polish and sharpen weapons, make stakes out of table legs. He keeps an eye on her reactions whenever he's handling stakes. Darla shows no discomfort, but makes sure there's always an axe or a sword by her chair, hoping that she never has to use them but just in case. He is her son and she loves him, but a bolt on her back and a rough, cold goodbye had taught her to be cautious.

*  
She rarely hunts anymore. She tells herself it's all part of her plan, just another way to make her son trust her a little.

She can sit with a glass of animal's blood and answer Connor's questions. He asks him about his father and her. Darla tells stories of far off places and people she knew. It's not hard to see he's looking for weaknesses, how many times they were close to dead and how they got away. Darla gives him enough to keep him listening, but she also shares the simpler moments: memories of curling by the fire, of walking together in cobbled streets, of bodies wrapped under the moonlight in a passionate embrace. She usually stops before reaching the really explicit details. She would share them though, if Connor ever asked her. He never does, of course.

*  
Jasmine still blooms in the Hyperion. Darla fills bowls with it, places them all over their room and lets the scent take her back to days of blood and whirlwinds.

The first time she does this Connor seems troubled and Darla, while curious, offers to take them away. He refuses. Darla twirls a single white flower between her fingers and watches him from the corner of her eye. She's worked very hard to win as much of his trust as possible since she arrived to Los Angeles. After the moment of weakness that lead to her downfall with Angel, she's learned not to rush. Just go with the flow, weight her options, play her cards right. She has nothing but time for him now.

He will tell her, eventually.

*

Los Angeles stands tall and proud. Leave it to Angel to find a way to save the town from certain destruction even if it killed him. Literally.

Darla tries very hard not to think about it.

It's hard not to when she follows her son on patrol. A few of the most dangerous demon lords survived, scattering all over and trying to prey on the population. These are the ones Connor hunts, finishing what Angel started. She wants to tell him it's hopeless, to choose a cause he can actually win and leave this forsaken city once and for all. But she knows he is too much like his father to just walk away.

All she can do now is teach him how to survive where Angel couldn't.

*

But sometimes is just too much.

She blames it on the rain. It's been a long night and they've barely made it after a confrontation with a rather nasty vampire group. She should have planned this better, should have seen their strategy coming, but she had been too busy making sure Connor was okay. It had been too soon for them to be going after such a large group. The fight had left them bruised and drained, but that was to be expected.

By the time it starts raining, they are only halfway back home and she can't help herself.

"It won't make a difference," she says, walking next to Connor. "You can maim and kill all the vampires and demons you want and there will be others."

Connor keeps walking, silent. Darla goes on.

"We could always go away. See the world. Take a break from this madness. Wouldn't you like that?"

"There will always be something to fight wherever we go," Connor says, eyes straight ahead. "We might as well stay here. Better the devil you know and all that." He could be talking about the creatures he fights every night.

"Because that worked for Angel," she says, the words out of her mouth because she can think it over.

Next thing she knows Connor's hand is on her arm, pushing her hard against a brick wall. Before she can react, he braces himself against the wall and looks at her, fire in his eyes.

"Don't…" he says, low and dangerous. Does he actually think he's going to scare her? It's not working.

Ok, maybe a little.

"I could keep quiet, but you know I'm right," she says. She raises her hand to his shoulder, pushing slightly. Connor refuses to move.

Under the lone streetlamp, raindrops glitter like diamonds on his hair, and he's probably pretending it's only rain water running down his face. Her brave little boy. Is he thinking about his false memories, that happy normal life, the loving family he left behind when he decided to follow Angel's path?

Angel. Connor looks so much like Angel right then and she has to resist the urge to rest his head on her shoulder and pretend that everything is going to be alright. Instead she stands her ground, her gaze never faltering.

"Doesn't mean I want to hear about it," he whispers before kissing her hard. Darla digs her hand on his shoulder and cups his face with the other one. He's the one pulling her close to him, his body impossibly warm in the cold wet night. She lets the demon face take over, fangs breaking the delicate skin of his lips just a little and drawing blood. It's the sweetest thing she's tasted in a long time.

Connor pulls away suddenly, the look in his eyes something between horrified and aroused. Blood coats his lips and she wants to lick it off so badly. He wipes it away with back of his hand and offers the other hand to Darla.

"It's almost dawn," he says. She nods and takes the offered hand.

Once they arrive at the hotel she goes to find something to drink and Connor locks himself in his room without a word. She goes to check on him five minutes later, smiling at the muffled sounds coming from the room.

 

*

He asks her to train with him a few days later. She is ruthless with him, handling her sword with fast, sharp moves. She hasn't done this in a long time but it all comes back to her. He is a quick study, strong and agile. She feels a brief moment of pride. It feels good, but it's also a dangerous distraction, allowing Connor to move forward, his sword opening a large gash between her neck and shoulder. Darla barely feels any pain, but the blood flows and she is annoyed about this particular shirt getting stained.

Connor forgets what she is for a moment and rushes to her with a towel. She lets him press the white cloth against her skin.

"I'm sorry," he says and she almost believes him.

"It's alright," she says. "I heal faster than you do anyway." She looks at him, takes in the bruise forming on his cheek, the blood on his lip. And those are only the visible wounds. "Maybe we should call it even?"

He is not listening. His eyes refuse to leave the blood soaked towel.

"I saw you like this once," he says "It wasn't you. It was another dead girl but she had your face for a moment… that time you tried to stop me."

Darla remembers a part of her dying that time, though she doesn't remember the details. She was already dead anyway, a mere echo.

"I'll be alright," she tells him and for one second she sees fear and worry in his eyes. Sure, she is a soulless monster. But she's also his mother. And he's already lost Angel.

Connor puts his hand on top of hers, pressing on the towel. After a few moments she slips her hand away and strokes the boy's face. Her dear boy. She leaves a bloody trail on his cheeks but he doesn't seem to mind. When her fingertips brush his lips he opens them slightly as he gasps softly. She can hear his heartbeat racing and it has nothing to do with their recent training. He's struggling with this, trying to do the right thing and walk away but unable to. She moves closer to him just as his hand leaves her shoulder, brushing her breast before stopping at her waist, not letting her go.

By the time he buries his head on her shoulder, she can feel him grow hard against her leg and she smiles. She's got him now.

*

He looks almost innocent afterwards; pouty lips half open, arms around his pillow. Of course, Darla knows better. She knows his lips are still swollen from her kisses and his left hand is closed around the stake he conceals with the pillow.

Darla runs her fingers through his hair and smiles at him, her own expression sweet, gentle, harmless. After a few minutes he reaches out, a hand tracing the delicate lips, the smooth skin of her cheek.

He doesn't let go of the stake though.

*

Darla wakes to a small hand stroking her bare shoulders, pulling the navy sheet away and exposing cold, pale flesh. She turns around, her eyes meeting his. Connor's hand moves up and down between her neck and shoulder, finding nothing but smooth skin all over.

"You won't find any scars," Darla tells him. He says nothing at first, then takes her hands in his and brings to his neck.

"Neither will you," he whispers before leaning down for a kiss.

*  
He tells her about Jasmine one rainy evening, after a night of patrolling.

"I saw her real face," Connor says, staring through the window, his back to her. "She was beautiful. I know other people wouldn't think so but she was."

"I'm sure she was," Darla replies. He continues the tale of his daughter and she listens. His hands are on the window frame and Darla can see him growing tense each second as he recalls what happened. His shirt is ripped, a flash of red on pale skin showing. He smells of blood, ashes and rain. It makes her think of the night he was born.

She puts her hands on his back, gently rubbing his shoulders. "She would want you to remember the good times. How much she loved you." She kisses the back of his head. "That you are not alone."

The look he gives her as he turns is ice cold. "You are playing me."

_Don't play games with me_

"Not this time," she says and after a few seconds he nods, relaxing just a little and letting her guide him to their bed.

*   
Darla tends to his wounds in silence. The healing is not vampire fast, but Connor is certainly healed enough every time he reaches across the bed for her. She kisses him hungrily as she opens herself to him. Their coupling is always rough, a contrast to their seemingly frail bodies. She leaves crimson marks all over his back and chest and his blunt teeth bury on the porcelain skin of her shoulders, drawing blood as their bodies move in an unforgiving pace. Sometimes she will even let him grab her wrists and hold them above her head in pretence of control.

Afterwards he rests his head on her shoulder – it's completely healed by now, but he moves gently and even places a soft kiss where a scar should be – and she holds him against her, her hand stroking his back. She watches him in silence and looks for familiar features. He is mostly hers: lips made for wicked things, thin body that could snap a man in half, big blue eyes filled by lust. He is innocence made into darkness.

 

*

One morning she enters their room and finds him examining an object hanging from an otherwise useless mirror. Drusilla's rosary.

"This is harmful for you," he says.

"Only the cross."

"Why do you keep it around then?"

"Because," she says, moving closer. "It may burn me, but it also reminds me of family."

He nods. "I think I know what you mean."

She smiles and leans forward. On the mirror, the outline of her lips appears out of nowhere on Connor's cheek.


End file.
